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Opinion: The Government Leviathan

Wonder Land columnist Dan Henninger on how the second Obama term has shown that government can become too big to be good. Photo: Getty Images

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

... I ... being president is ... there's so much underneath you ... but you can't know because the government so fast ... welcome back to Opinion Journal I'm Mary Kissel ... that was David Axelrod a very powerful form of Obama advisor ... I explain away the iris Eresman scandal when alien Columnist and Henninger is ... here and and ... in your column you called this comment ... the biggest free in slipping fifty years why ... well it is because of the new David Axelrod is saying that the government has become so big that even the president can't understand what's going on all their across the vast ... void of America ... of this calls into question the sort of the bedrock philosophy that people like David Axelrod or Brock Obama bringing to government which dates back to the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt ... where they started to discuss the erection of something called the administrative state ... and the idea there was that it will be possible for government use saying well intentioned bureaucrats ... were going to implement ideas created by best and brightest Mark social scientists lawyers ... and that this will provide good government ... off into the indefinite future and that was sort of promise ... and this is the kind of idea the Brock Obama brought in to government smarter government right transparent government ... good government that's what he told the graduates of Ohio State the other day ... don't believe this criticism that the government is your enemy government has got ... it and it's easy to go beyond just a bureaucratic ... bungling ... you get a couple examples in the column on most sinister examples of of government ... almost extending its reach beyond simple law ... aam you be cited disparate impact for example ... manages to Colome elephants defined racial discrimination on the other other bad things going on in that time in her room to sit in the column the high point ... well there was an example off from years ago that I didn't mention it was a huge thing at the time that was the environmental species Act and your environmental species Act ... was used to prosecute farmers all across the United States because the government's finding the so called an endangered species like the snail tartar ... on their property and saw ... a lot of that really did come onto the oops I mean what's going on here with these activist conservative groups in the IRS ... is awful but the fact is that the government abuses citizens in that way ... on the kind of routine basis and part of the problem is Mary ... that if Washington if say the White House can really keep track of what's going on out there ... that they say we're not really a culpable for this well ... on the common will all work is going to invariably tip over into the pew is not good benevolent government and I think the question now ... is whether the government has gotten so big and so one accountable in so many places ... that you run the risk of more abuse rather than more about the novel and I knew you raise a ten percent is the ultimate question then arises out of the colony don't trust in that column which is ... he has this problem gotten so large ... that this massive bureaucracy is simply an re form all ... it's an open question area of the federal government is indeed very did up I do believe though that ... the American people looking at things like the R S and scale of government now ... Obamacare which are interesting we knew ... that the people of never quite embrace this huge new entitlement ... I think they're in a move to reform it to start scaling back and try to rationalize ... some of these government agencies and programs and we just had a movement like that is called ... party move ... erupted in oh nine and ten ... it did result in ... a swing in the house representatives but then the media cannot said no ... so pay attention to those people they're crazy by their radicals they're not speaking for you the rest of the American public its reading this newspaper or listen to this TV station ... to have this massive pushback from allies of that big bureaucracy immune when a seventy two ... well it's going to teach you that some fears of local opportunity here I think on the Republican can happen with all political leadership ... and it's going to require ... somebody on the Republican side to meet potential presidential candidates ... elevating these issues and talking about them and act in a concrete way about performing scaling back the government that can't just spontaneously happen from below that all was passed the lead and will see whether any funny steps forward